Thursday, January 22, 2009

Fessing Up

I spotted the Interview Me Meme on a couple of blogs recently, and when our very own Peener spilled his guts... well, if Peener is pushing a bandwagon then I'm climbing aboard.

There are rules! I believe in waiting my turn, colouring within the lines, and never, ever switching the tags, so I'll be a good scout and play by the rules. (Although, I can't see myself thinking up more than 30 original and insightful questions, so I'll cap this at the first 5 respondees if many want to play.) Oh, and you have to have your own blog to play.

Want to be part of it? Follow these instructions:1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

So, here's La Peenester's questions and my answers:

Your blog is excellent at detailing the life of The Other Andrew and your profile is unusually detailed, but we still demand more. Can you give us a short bio that tells us who you are, where you came from, what you’re knitting?

I was born in the UK in 1964, the youngest of three (and only boy) to Jean and Derek. One year later we upped socks and moved to Australia as 10 Pound Poms, following my mother's parents, sister and brother who had all moved here previously and settled in Adelaide. I was only 1 so remember none of it, but the three day flight in a plane that broke down every time it stopped, and our first year in Oz spent living in a quonset hut in a re-settlement camp became the stuff of family legend.

I had a happy childhood, despite a somewhat distant relationship with my father (a rather taciturn man) and the knowledge that I was Not Quite Like The Other Boys. I drew a lot, made things, read books by the dozen, loved movies and had a rich interior fantasy life. (And thus an Art Fag is born.) I sang in a choir up until my voice broke, or shattered really, and played the French Horn rather badly for a couple of years. I did very well at school, was popular with other kids and teachers, got good grades (especially in art, English and languages) and although I struggled to apply myself, I enjoyed my school years. Oh, and I was, shall we say... sexually precocious at school.

About the time I was 13 or 14 I had sussed The Gay Situation and when I was 15 I told all my school friends. I started attending a youth group for young gay guys after being introduced to it by Paul, a guy I was having a a demi-disastrous affair with after I answered his personals ad in the paper when I was 17. Anyhoo, this is supposed to be brief! I stayed with the youth group for quite a while and ended up helping to run it. At 18 I became a telephone counsellor for a gay help line (their youngest ever). A year later I started a relationship with a Welshman, who would emigrate to Oz and be my boyfriend until taking off with little warning 2 years later shortly after my Mum died from cancer.

Fast forwarding. I backpacked around parts of Europe in my mid twenties, and spent time in England with my Dad who had moved back and married his brother's widow about 4 or 5 years after Mum died. Back in Adelaide I was bored and frustrated, so I followed the migration of some of my friends to Sydney and fell head over heels in love with my new home. After a Mardi Gras romance that became a long distance relationship I made the BAD decision to move back to Adelaide in 1997. We broke up 6 months later and it took me nearly 18 months to get back here.

So, since then my most significant relationship was with Mikey (the lovely ex) with whom I'm still very close. I would describe myself as extremely social, yet with a real need for quiet alone time too. My worst failing is procrastination, it creeps into almost all aspects of life, including relationships. I can be crabby, but generally I'm pretty easy going. I don't handle tiredness, rejection, or feeling judged very well. I'm always told I'm pretty funny, and I love to laugh and make others laugh.

Tall & Handsome is the moniker I gave to Peter, a guy I originally met as a friend of a friend through knitting circles. Not surprisingly, he's very tall (about 6'2" I think, which beats my 5'4" hands down) and handsome in my beholder's eyes. He's a knitter, a very smart guy, the owner of a small dog who he loves dearly, a scientist (botanist), and best of all very sweet and kind, and the giver of lovely big bear hugs.

The tyranny is distance, he lives as far from me as you can in this country without falling off the edge. I am very, very reticent about long distance relationships (done it 3 times) so the distance is an issue of big importance. We are not likely to be living anywhere near each other for at least another 4 years, and frankly I don't want to live anywhere else. (All of this Pete knows, so I'm not telling tales out of school here.) So we're keeping it light and playing it by ear, and I'll be seeing him again at Easter.

You just finished a job search (yay!) so I’m sure you had to contend with that awful question interviewers love “What’s your greatest weakness?” where you have to make up some bullshit that sounds convincing but doesn’t actually scare off possible employers. Since you’re not looking for a job from us, spill it honey, the truth: What really is your greatest weakness?

Shoot. I can list my weaknesses and still be going half an hour later. Chocolate. Handsome men. Sad stories and happy endings. Puppies. In all seriousness, my greatest weakness? I've already mentioned it, procrastination. Taking the path of least resistance. Putting things off. Not doing the things I don't want to, until they either blow up into a shitstorm or miraculously disappear! You might say this is a failing more than a weakness maybe, but I wish I could be more strong and less weak about this.

I’m fascinated by your New Year’s pantie party and so impressed with your attending. How, exactly, did someone instigate the underwear swap?

Ha! This was a) probably the wildest semi-public event I have ever been to and b) talking about it is probably going to shock some people who already consider me a big discloser. So, here goes. I went to the New Year's Day 'recovery' (misnomer!) party with my friend Christopher. It was advertised as a fetish play party, and was being held at a leather bar that I have already been to a couple of times. The bar is normally pretty tame, so I wasn't sure how wild it would get. I wore a black undershirt, a black jocktrap and some boxer brief style trunks over the top (for modesty).

It was very quiet when we got there, only about a half dozen other guys there. Christopher and I got chatting to a couple of other guys, and as more people arrived the sexual heat got well, hotter. I discarded the boxer briefs. Some friends of the guys we were chatting to showed up, and one had shorts on because he wasn't wearing any underwear. Handsome young Lochie (who was wearing tiny trunks) offered a swap, and thus it began. Within a short while we were swapping amongst ourselves and Lochie ended up in my jockstrap (to the joy of all concerned) and I in his trunks. From that point on it all got very bachanallian...

How’s your sleeping these days?

Aren't you sweet for asking?! Very good, but a little weird. My early to bed habits have changed and now I'm often still up after midnight. The drugs I'm on have helped enormously, I sleep through the night now, but yet I'm going to bed a lot later and so sleeping better but sleeping less. Maybe it's the quality of sleep I'm getting, but I'm much less fatigued than I used to be even though I'm sleeping a bit less. I am very unsettled by a side effect of the drugs though, very, very dry eyes. Almost difficult to blink when I first wake up. Every now and then I skip the drugs and get a natural all night sleep, which is wonderful, but I'm reticent to go off them because I don't want to go back to how I was and then have to start the drug process over. (They are so strong you have to start taking them in stages of increasing strength.)

~~~~~

Wow! Good questions. I hope you learned something new about me from my answers. If you want to play leave me a comment to say so, and sent me your email address to andrewmr(at)ihug(dot)com(dot)au!

You might like to use something called lacrilube - available from the chemist without prescription for the dry eyes. It's a lanolin based lubricant (a knitting byproduct!) which you put in your eyes before you go to sleep and stops that awful dry eye in the morning. An alternative is viscotears.

I'll fess as well.I took the job over west cos it paid well & work in Sydney, for me, is not very forthcoming.I refuse to make Andrew move as he is so very happy in Sydney & that is what is important in our relationship.I've met the lovely Mikey & want to meet James O'B. but I don't want to be in their pockets. I'm a strong believer in partners having their own friends. I'm not jealous one iota.

Okay, I've gone backwards and forward on this one (I actually wrote a reply last night, but didn't post it)... partially because you were so forthright and honest in your answers, it kind of sets the bar up high... but I guess I can always be flippant (why change the habit of a lifetime)...

This is the blog of a 47 year old gay guy in Sydney, Australia. I'm short on stature, but big on ideas. Spending much of my time looking at life through a slightly twisted lens, attempting to unscrew the inscrutible.